December 18, 2015

WWE Tag Team Champion Xavier Woods recently spoke with Sports Illustrated's Extra Mustard blog. The full interview is at this link. He revealed the original idea for his "UpUpDownDown" YouTube gaming channel and noted that there are plans for Triple H and Vince McMahon to appear at some point in the future. He said:

"I sacrifice sleep to do it. Originally, I wanted to do a Travel Channel show. Normally, if we're staying in a town before a show, I'll go to a barcade. Those are dive bars that have tons of arcades, since there aren't a ton of arcades where kids can put quarters in games and actually have that kind of arcade experience. Barcades are for those people who lived through that generation, and I pitched a show for the [WWE] Network where I'd go to these different places each week."

Woods said WWE was interested in that idea but then it was pitched to him as a weekly online gaming site. "We merged the ideas and came up with a YouTube gaming channel," said Woods. "I always have my carrying case–it's called a GAEMS case, and has my PS4 in it and a built-in TV–and so we put together a gaming channel. The first couple episodes where me and Kofi [Kingston] playing FIFA, and the loser had to eat hot peppers. It was stuff that we were already doing, but now we're filming it and putting on a little punishment at the end. We've been branching out and connecting with other YouTubers, other arcades, and other gaming people. We're learning what's good, what's bad, the connections to use with the systems and TVs, and it's been a very eye-opening experience."

An interesting comment from the interview was Woods saying his goal is to help Kofi Kingston become the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. "'Stone Cold' [Steve Austin] explained that if you're not trying to be heavyweight champion, then you're in the wrong business," said Woods. "That's interesting to me because my goal is to make sure Kofi becomes heavyweight champion. He is the guy who absolutely deserves it over anyone else in the company. My long-term goal is to help, in whatever way I can, Kofi become heavyweight champion."

Woods talked a lot more about video games, his plans for the channel, how close he is with Kofi and Big E, and more in the full interview.